Thursday, 2 November 2017

Earlier this year Cerys (Gareth & Sandra's daughter) sent us a message on behalf of the charity Help
International. She identified several projects that they are supporting and asked us to consider doing something in the run up to Christmas to help. We recognised one name straight away - Charles Kudzerema in Zambia who has been to visit us in Chesterfield a few times. This request had come directly from him:

"The Maize Production Project is the Project Gladys and myself have initiated to help the most underprivileged poor of the poorest in the communities we serve. We are supporting these people with the proceeds from our Irrigation Project. The setback we are facing to run our Irrigation project is that our Irrigation equipment is 15 years old and is no longer performing effectively. We have had a lot of breakdowns repairing it time and again.

The permanent solution is to replace with new irrigation equipment. Forster in Bulawayo is a specialist in Irrigation has recommended us to have new equipment quoted on the list attached. I have also included the cost of the 40 x10 kgs bags of maize seed for the Maize Production for the poor.

If I can have the New Irrigation now I should be in a position to buy fertilizer to help some of the poor families before the rain season in November. I will also teach these poor families how to plough and plant their maize crop. I will also encourage them to use humous and anthill mature to enrich their soil.

My passion is to see people free from hunger and poverty." Charles K

Last Sunday we asked you to bring in your copper coins to make a trail around the meeting room. We had so many we could probably have gone from Alfreton to Chesterfield! I had to borrow the projector case on wheels in order to be able to get the coins into my car because the bags were so heavy! I took it to the bank on Monday and it took several fillings of the coin catcher to get it all through. They are certainly not short of change at Nat West now. The grand total including silver coins and folding money was £295.42 which we have rounded up to a nice round £300 which is on it's way to Charles.

This is the message we have received back from Cerys:

Dear Jacky,

This is wonderful news! Thankyou so much for your email and all of the church generosity. Mum and Dad came back with a video of the copper trail from last weekend - such a great idea! I may post this on our next newsletter to encourage others to give and think creatively.